An argument for reincarnation

Here’s a fun argument:

1. We are responsible for something.

2. To be responsible for anything that is not a choice, we have to have been responsible for choosing it.

3. To be responsible for anything that is choice, we have to be responsible for the features of our character by which we made the choice.

4. So, if we are responsible for something, we have made an infinite sequence of choices.

5. So, we have made an infinite sequence of choices.

6. We have not made an infinite sequence of choices in any one life.

7. So, we have had an infinite sequence of lives.

Famously, Galen Strawson makes the 2–4 part of this argument, and concludes that since we have not made an infinite sequence of choices, we are not responsible for anything. But I think it is more reasonable to believe in reincarnation (or some other way of having had infinitely many choices—say, a supertask) than to disbelieve in responsibility.

That said, I don’t think we should take the above as providing significant evidence for reincarnation. For even if we had made an infinite number of choices, I don’t think that would get us out of the point Strawson is making. There would still be a sense in which we wouldn’t be responsible “for the regress”. This observation has applications beyond free will: an infinite regress of causes doesn’t explain the universe.

My own preferred way out of Strawson’s argument does not involve infinite regresses, but simply denying premise (3). Premise (3) is plausible when our character determines the choice, but less so when it does not. Take a paradigm example of someone freely and indeterministically making a choice with conflicting desires and reasons for different options. Then imagine that they were brainwashed into having these very desires and reasons. That doesn’t affect the freedom with which they choose on the basis of those desires and reasons.